OPEN: Cloudreach Event

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

Comments

[stabsbooks]

Her eyes flick down to him, and then back up. The figures are still nowhere to be seen, and she's growing less and less certain that they'd really been there at all.

If they had been...she doesn't like to think about what that implies. Certainly they are not the first demons she has caught sight of in the past few days, but never had she seen so many focused so intently on one person.

She shakes her head, feeling guilty even as she takes a step back. It feels wrong, to abandon him with such an entourage, but what can she do?

"Yes. No. I am - " She hesitates, frowning. Her head is swimming, and she feels suddenly exhausted. "Perhaps it would be best if I were to - lie down. Just for a moment."

[onlyhymns]

Seeing her beginning to fade, Cade carefully-- and to the irritable protests of a few-- sets down the corner of the wagon he's been holding and steps toward Cassandra, ready to catch her if she should fall. He's seen this affliction manifest in several people already, and from what he can tell, fainting is a real possibility.
"Please forgive my impertinence, Seeker, but I think you should go to the healers," he says, tentative of voice but certain of mind.

[stabsbooks]

"I do not need the healers."

The suggestion doesn't even merit consideration. There are so many sick - sicker than her. The healers have their hands full as it is.

And Cade is easy to ignore, with his tentative manner. She waves him off, even as she takes another step towards the keep. A few hours' rest...that's all she needs.

"I will be fine. Return to your duties."

[onlyhymns]

Cade is hesitant to leave her be-- they need her, after all-- but he's not one to disobey an order from a direct superior. He steps back, still watching her until he has to turn to pick up his end of the cart again. A few grumpy comments follow from his fellows, but he's either impervious to them or so accustomed that they don't merit a reaction.

Periodically he still glances over at Cassandra, making sure she's still on her feet.